IoT Aids Scooter Sharing for Cities, Companies

Premier Wireless Solutions is teaming with Internet of Things sensor and connectivity company CalAmp to provide a cellular-based solution to detect where motorized scooters are located as they are operated or parked, and to enable individuals to find, pay for and unlock the scooters via an app.

Premier Wireless Solutions (PWS) is partnering with telematics and Internet of Things (IoT) company CalAmp, located in Irvine, Calif., to provide an IoT-enabled vehicle-sharing service to cities and service providers. The two California-based companies are making their solution for motorized scooter management available to micro-mobility providers that are launching electric scooter-sharing services across the United States.

Electric scooter sharing is part of a micro-mobility transportation trend that has spread across urban areas throughout the United States in recent years. The scooters are designed to get commuters the last mile to their home or office, from their public transit station or stop.

PWS provides a cloud-based solution to enable the sharing of vehicles, including the capturing and sharing of scooter-utilization data and the displaying of real-time location data on the company's commuter app. CalAmp, meanwhile, provides the telematics technology with sensors and connectivity required to identify vehicle locations and to drive operational efficiencies and optimize asset use.

With such data, a person can locate a nearby available scooter, then pay to access it, while the city or scooter provider can view usage history, the locations of assets, battery status and other information about their fleet. "The PWS platform enables them to have real-time communication and location information for each scooter through the CalAmp device," explains Dave Rattay, Premier Wireless Solutions' regional sales manager.

Scooter sharing can be challenging for cities or companies that have a large fleet of assets spread throughout a city. Identifying where each asset is located tends to be a manual process if no IoT-based solution is in place. Some solutions rely on the GPS data of a user's cell phone to determine where a scooter being used is located, but this process provides a poor user experience, Rattay says, since it degrades the phone's battery.